I took it once. It was pretty expensive, but sharp looking, although ending up in the bad part of Stockton at sunset was a bit disconcerting.
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SF Bay Area
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Re: Anyone Tried The Altamont Commuter Express?
Mon, January 19, 2004 - 3:30 AMI'm actually planning on making a great big loop trip from SF and back this Spring or Summer - using the Altamont.
SF - > San Jose via Caltrain
San Jose - > Stockton via ACE
Stockton - > Richmond via Amtrak San Joaquin
Richmond - > SF via BART
I was thinking of adding a leg up to Sacramento, but I'm not sure I could do it all in one day. Looking forward to seeing the ACE route - it's definitely a beautiful trip and steeped in more than a century of rail history. -
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Re: Anyone Tried The Altamont Commuter Express?
Mon, January 19, 2004 - 6:03 PMThe ACE trains only run during the morning and
evening commute hours. So if you are planning to
do your trip during mid-day times, your trip may not
be possible via ACE. -
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Re: Anyone Tried The Altamont Commuter Express?
Tue, January 20, 2004 - 1:04 AMDo the Eastbound trains only run in the afternoon?
I had actually imagined there would be mostly empty eastbound trains running in the morning... I didn't even think about the fact that it makes no sense to do that... especially since they only have three (if that many?) trainsets. I guess it's obvious that they run all their sets westbound in the morning, lay up in SJ and then run em all back eastbound in the afternoon. Hrrrrmm.
Kinda puts a crimp in my gloriously hazy plans.
So when does anyone know when the first eastbound train leaves SJ?
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Re: Anyone Tried The Altamont Commuter Express?
Tue, January 20, 2004 - 10:53 AMI looked into this loop trip a while back; there's only one option! You have to catch the first eastbound ACE in order to hook up with Amtrak in Stockton (not the same station!) in order to make it back to BART on time ... I think the schedule was something like "get on BART around noon" and be back where you started after 10pm. I was thinking of adding VTA light-rail to the Caltrain/ACE connection: get off in Mountain View, I guess. -
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Anyone Tried The Altamont Commuter Express?
Tue, January 20, 2004 - 6:45 PMYeah, and then what happens is the ACE train puts you in Stockton just at nightfall in the scariest part of town. Stockton, downtown, it turns out, is so violent that they can't run busses at night because all their drivers were attacked repeatedly. Scary.
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